The invention relates to a centrifuge chamber for biological samples.
Fractionation and separation of cells from suspensions like blood or bone marrow is becoming more and more part of medical treatment. For such treatment, cells are extracted from a patient then separated to provide the desired target cells which are usually stimulated/manipulated/expanded by cell culturing before introducing into the same or a different patient. Extracting, preparation, fractionation, separation, manipulation and introducing of the cells should be performed as fast as possible to reduce stress imposed on the target cells and the patients. Contrary to these requirements, cell culturing is a laborious and time-consuming process.
Fractionation and separation of cell suspensions by centrifugation are long known in the art to separate samples of biological origin into two or more components. For example, the separation of human blood into leucocytes, erythrocytes and blood plasma is an often performed process and can be conduced in a semi automated apparatuses as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,605,223, U.S. Pat. No. 4,446,014 or U.S. Pat. No. 81,242,342. These publications are silent about cell culturing.
WO 2009/072006 and WO 2009/072003 disclose a centrifugation system with centrifugation chambers suitable for cell separation. The chamber can be provided with layers for adhering and culturing the separated cells. WO 2009/072006 and WO 2009/072003 are silent about the cell culturing conditions and the supply of the cells with gases and nutrition. This centrifugation system and/or centrifugation chambers are optimized for cell separation rather than cell culturing of the separated cells.